by Dean H Wild
The phone rang again. Harley knocked the handset from its cradle. It landed on the nightstand, mouthpiece up, and a reedy, distorted voice buzzed from the plastic. “Out of Knoll.”
Harley glared at it. “What the hell?” And then he shouted. “Jesus, Mick, watch out!”
Mick felt a whoosh as the mortality log, suddenly airborne, sailed just inches from his head. Harley, despite his size and weariness, managed to leap out of the bed and duck out of its path. The book crashed into the wall above the bed and then flopped onto the mattress like a mortally wounded bird.
The wall speaker blared into the crackling air. “Out of Knoll!”
Seconds later, the charge in the room diminished, dissipated, vanished.
“You okay?” Mick asked.
“Yeah, sure, for a guy in a dress.” Harley tugged the back of his hospital johnnie together. There was a bloody patch on the back of his hand where his I.V. line tore free during his book dodge. In kind, his I.V. unit began to emit a three-note alarm over and over. “What was that all about?”
Mick gave the book a cautionary poke. “Somebody trying to tell us something.”
“I’m not sure I get the message. Out of Knoll. What the hell does that mean?”
“Fyvie said it to me during the fire, too,” Mick said and flipped through the book until he found the page bearing the freshest entry.
At the same time, Harley picked up the schematic drawing, which had fluttered away when he leapt out of bed, and spread it open on the sheets. They stood side by side, each studying what was laid out in front of them. The room seemed very still despite the electronic chirp of the I.V. alarm and the more distant, off-the-hook alarm of the phone receiver.
Mick read the new entry in the mortality log. “The Honorable Judge Roderick Thekan.”
It was penned with a shaky infirmity, but then again a pen infused with life for brief seconds could not be held to good penmanship. Not in Wonderland. The newest date, which was aligned with other dates of passing on the page, was May 21, 1939. The cause of death: blank.
“I was visited yesterday by that stranger I saw walking into town. He asked me about the records at the village hall.” Mick’s lips felt very cold. “As it turns out he is a judge named Thekan. One hell of a coincidence, if you know what I mean.”
“Crazy thoughts aren’t always wrong thoughts,” Harley said and took up the schematic. “Not after what we just saw happen in here. And this is what I’ve got to contribute, now that the room is a little calmer.”
He tapped the paper again, and this time Mick saw the word right away, how it was attributed to a part of the drawing by way of a dotted line. “Igniter,” he said, “like a furnace. To heat something?”
Harley’s eyes turned hard. “Nope. To cause some type of combustion. Or explosion.”
Those eyes also swam with the signs of fatigue now. It was easy to forget, given their little distraction, why Harley was here. “Why don’t you get back into bed,” Mick insisted.
He pressed the nurse call button and told the responding voice that Harley’s I.V. had come out. A moment later the nurse with the foamy soles came in and straightened up, admonished Harley for being too rough and gave Mick, who put everything back into the LINR box, a smoldering glance on her way out.
Once the room was theirs again, the air seemed gravid, this time with possibilities.
“Will and Kippy should come up here with me tomorrow so we can all hash this out.”
“Good idea.” Harley wrung his hands in his lap. His eyes bore more than weariness now. “But make it late morning. They’ve got me down for tests at the goddamned crack of dawn.”
“You’re the boss,” Mick said, and stepped to the door. Then, with a flash of correlation: “Out of Knoll. You asked what it means. I think it means we’re running out of help. ‘Listen to me before I’m spent’ is how Fyvie put it. And he said once the help is gone, it will be just the townspeople, Thekan, and The Crymost.”
“Our help is leaving.” Harley’s eyes drifted closed, his voice turned thick with the grayness of onrushing sleep. “Which means those of us who know something better move on it. Hell of a thing.”
“It is,” Mick said and backed out of the room, suddenly made afraid for Harley again by the way the big man was tipped back against his pillows, mouth open, hands curled loose at his sides like old wood shavings.
He spoke in a soft tone from the doorway. “I’ll see you tomorrow, big guy.”
Before he left, he turned out the light.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Judy parked at Pitch Road’s new chain barrier, got out and ducked under with Beth Ann right behind. She brought a flashlight but didn’t bother to turn it on. A watercolor streak of last-light on the horizon accented their way for the time being. Besides, it seemed rather natural to initiate this lowly ceremony in the dark.
“Will Harley notice his beer stein is missing?” she asked.
“There are five more like it gathering dust in the back of the dining room curio cabinet, so I doubt it.”
Judy merely nodded. They were nearing The Crymost fork and the air gained density, as if the darkness moved around them in mounting waves. She switched on the flashlight, lowly ceremonies be damned.
“Do we need to say anything?” she asked. “When we get up there, I mean.”
“No. The Crymost will know.”
They stopped just inside the barrier of bushes. An elvish, green glow blushed up from below The Crymost ledge and it gave Judy the sense of being in the presence of a huge, slowly-waking animal.
“Okay,” Beth Ann said.
She inched up to the edge of the outcrop. For an instant Judy’s feet nearly took over and sent her across to pull Beth Ann back before she was snatched away by whatever hungry thing might cling to the unseen side of the ledge. She fought it down. Beth Ann tossed the stein over with a two-handed lob. The offering twirled end over end, limned in green light and dropped out of sight. Peaceful.
“There. I’ve done my part.” Beth Ann turned back with a light sigh. As she looked past Judy, her expression changed to puzzlement. “Who are they?”
Judy whirled around.
Four people occupied the way out, spaced randomly in the gloom. Three men and one woman, each facing The Crymost drop off. Judy swept her light across them and found no solace in the details lent by the flashlight’s glow. The woman’s clothes were old fashioned, a long woolen dress buttoned up to the throat. By contrast, a miserable looking young man closest to the barrier of shrubs wore a Kurt Cobain T-shirt. His hands, lashed together with coil upon coil of narrow twine, dangled near his crotch. The other two gentlemen were older, one wearing what appeared to be a century-old banker’s suit and mutton chop sideburns, the other a farmer dressed for the field. None of them truly stood, she saw with real shock. They were suspended, their feet dangling inches above the ground.
Beth Ann came up behind her and dug fingers into her shoulder. “What do we do?”
Judy found no words. Her thoughts came up again and again against the improbability of those dangling feet like a trapped thing.
At last she took an infirm step forward, her light held out before her. “Stay right behind me.”
“They’re part of this place. They must be.”
The man closest to them, the banker man, ignored them as they passed him. His mouth remained a harsh line beneath a wild mustache as bushy as his sideburns. The pockets of his long coat bulged, Judy noticed. To each wrist and ankle a brick was tied with frayed twine. He was wet. Soaked, in fact. The redolence of wet cloth came off of him in waves. Droplets from his shoes pattered in the grass. She forced herself another step forward before she realized Beth Ann was no longer behind her.
“Help him,” her friend said. She was not addressing Judy. “Please, tell me The Crymost will help my Harley.”
“Hey.” Judy swung her light until it fixed on Beth Ann, who knelt before the woman in the dark dress.
The woman consi
dered her supplicant with yellow-skimmed eyes which were hardened by a type of growing alarm.
“The results of this place are of another stripe now,” the woman said. It sounded as if the throat under that heavy collar might be riddled with holes. “Energies are bolder. I do not know why I tell you this. Only that something moves me to do so.”
“You’re like angels,” Beth Ann stood, her hands clasped and trembling at her breast. “Angels with a message.”
Judy took another step. The twisted brand of hope on her friend’s face frightened her, and the air took on a sudden foreboding, as if she, Beth Ann, and the strangers were being observed with calculating malice. She glanced behind at the drop off, where the glow increased in intensity, before striding up to her friend. “We need to go.”
“Shit’s on the move,” said the farmer man. His white hair was plastered in wet ringlets to his scalp. “Even the Lachrymose don’t understand all of it. Don’t like it none, neither.”
A thick hunk of metal resembling the harrow from a plow sat on the ground just below the man’s dangling boots. A length of rope tethered it to his waist. Words shook through Judy like a tolling bell. Drowned. Suicides. It jarred her and somehow freed up her mental channels. She reached out and snagged her friend’s wrist.
“The aperture closes ever tighter,” the man with the mutton chops spoke into the glow, “and those who mean to help will soon find their chances ended. In moments, we will fade. At last, an ended goodbye.”
“No!” Beth Ann broke away from Judy and clutched at the woman in the dress, twisting the fabric of sodden sleeves in her fists. “Not before you help my Harley. Just one blessing. Just one. Please.”
The woman reached out and nearly but not quite cupped Beth Ann’s chin in her pallid hands, her expression soft, her yellowed eyes on the verge of being filled with hurt. Her words were made slurry by dribbles of greenish water leaking through her teeth. “The Crymost is at work in exceptional ways just now. By its nature, it will succor regardless of its own desires, because you have made your plea in the proper way. I believe your man will once again hold you in strong hands.”
“Thank you,” Beth Ann sobbed. “Oh, thank you, good God, thank you.”
“Enough,” Judy said and took her friend by the shoulders.
Beth Ann succumbed and allowed herself to be led away. Judy brought their pace up to a stumbling run, the rapturous look on her friend’s face bringing to light one more truth she had no business knowing. Prayer, possessions, and sometimes the body as a whole might be flung out in offering, just so relief from the unbearable might be known. Some convictions were naïve and yet inherently valid, the viable currency of the soul.
The last stranger in their path was the young man in the Cobain shirt. Beads of water in his immature beard caught The Crymost glow like gems. He held out his bound hands. His shoulders jerked and popped. His dangling bare feet waggled. The front of his shirt bumped outward as his ribs muttered and cracked. Judy gave Beth Ann an extra push. The last thing she wanted was for those cold, twine-bound hands to give her shoulder a chummy rap.
“Hey,” he called after them. “It’s spontaneous, baby. That’s the beauty of it. We’re just trying to help.”
She continued her stumbling run and did not let go of Beth Ann until they reached the car. They drove back to Knoll, their breaths fogging the windows while The Crymost glow stole deeper onto the horizon.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mick had powered down his cell phone before he went to see Harley and did not switch it on again until he was on his way back to the car. It rang immediately, flashing a message regarding six missed calls.
“Thank God,” Judy said when he picked up. “Come home, Mick. Come home right now. Beth Ann’s here and it’s . . . oh God, just come right away.”
The drive home from Drury was an agonizing eternity, and when he got there Judy met him at the door. Her pale expression alarmed him further. “What’s wrong? Are you and Beth Ann okay?”
“She’s in the guest bedroom, sleeping,” Judy said and wrapped him in a deep and desperate embrace. Her words became muffled against his chest. “It’s a good thing she carries her Valium wherever she goes. What’s happening in this town, Mick? With The Crymost?”
A sick dread flared up in him. “What about The Crymost? What happened?”
“Not here.”
She led him through the kitchen and onto the back porch. He’d waited too long, his sick dread told him, and now something had happened to Judy, and this was going to lead to him telling her everything. It must. They sat across from one another and held hands like people preparing to embark on an unknown, perhaps treacherous endeavor.
An hour later it was all done. Judy told her story straight through, and he did his best not to interrupt. Then he told his part, which took considerably longer because he started with the supposed TB outbreak in the ‘30s. When he was done they stared at one another, their binding acceptance leaving it all indisputable.
“So what do we do?” she finally asked. “And why does it have to be us? I’m relieved as hell you’re not having your old issues from the Robbie Vaughn days because for a while it seemed like a real possibility, but this seems irrational in its own way, to try and build a defense against something so . . . unnatural.”
“Why me? Think about what we’ve got . . . ” He raised a finger to mark each of his points. “Harley is sick, Orlin Casper is dead, Kippy is pretty spry but his age alone makes him a concern as much as a help. That leaves me and Will Adelmeyer. I’d take some help. Hell, I’d welcome it with open arms, but this isn’t exactly a town vote where you can recruit supporters with red and green posters.”
“Us, Mick. I said us.”
His jaw tightened. “Not in a million years. I don’t want you involved any further in this.” He got up and rested his hands on the porch railing. The night moved by as quiet and complacent as the Wistweaw on the other side of town.
“I’m already involved.” She stepped up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Four very dead-yet-talking people clinched it for me. And I’m going to hold my ground like any self-respecting Knoll resident. “
He turned around. “Emotionally nailed to the town?”
She shook her head. “To the man trying to protect it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kippy Evert lost track of how long he stared at the small wooden box with its crude attempts at embellishment. One of his first forays into woodworking. It was swollen from its time in the water.
Orlin took to the box right away on a long ago day down in the basement workshop. Offered him twenty dollars for it, but Kippy said he should just take it. Orlin did, and used it for years, maybe for matchbooks or cufflinks or some such. Then one day when Orlin’s wife was being shipped off to the rest home in Drury, he returned it. Downsizing, Orlin said, a term for squeezing an ocean of life’s memoires and possessions down to a regrettable trickle. Kippy accepted the box and put it in a prominent place on the end table next to his reading lamp. Until he took it to The Crymost on Orlin’s behalf, not two short days ago.
“And, here y’ are, back again,” he said to it, softly. “Damnedest thing.”
He assessed the books recently placed on his end table and weighed their meaning and how they fit in with Orlin’s box. This joined with the weighty sense of something coming—not the something brewing at The Crymost exactly, but an offshoot of it, a bit of business directed solely at him, due any time now, and he shivered.
The knock on his door was gentle, and he got up almost immediately as if an old friend might be calling at this late hour. “The Judge, no doubt. Let’s get this show on the road, then.”
Kirkpatrick Evert, you are too reckless, his mother used to say. But carelessness wasn’t usually stitched up the back with suspicion like this. Or fear, he decided as he shuffled across the living room, box in hand.
The man on his porch stood rigid, gray hair blowing in the night breeze, eyes alig
ht with anticipation. There were green-white points where his pupils should be. Aw, hell.
“Thekan, ain’t it?” he said and stepped aside to admit the man.
“Evert. The digger,” Thekan replied, his dark shoes whispering on the carpet, his sport shirt crackling.
Kippy executed a quick movement he hoped Thekan would not notice, a lean out of his door as if to snatch one last breath of clear air before this buggerfest got ramped up. His hands performed a quick, efficient task, setting a singular object on the porch floor, then he turned back to face his guest.
“I assure you, I’m alone,” Thekan said.
“So I see.” He closed the door, swallowed hard. “Alone and calling late. Why is that, d’ you suppose?”
Thekan smiled, slow and conciliatory. The door lock, untouched, engaged with a metallic snap. The window in the kitchen, which was open just a crack, closed with an efficient thump. “Circumstances call for it.”
“I ‘magine they do,” Kippy said, a tremble stirring within him more fiery than he’d known in years. He strode to the end table where a stack of old books rested in the lamplight. “I’ve been doing some checking up on you. See, not everything gets stuck away at the village hall. Sometimes when a man works for Knoll for a while, his basement gets used as an overflow for certain things. Things a man might forget he kept, until he takes a look.”
“I’m aware. But now it’s time for this town to forget, one piece and one person at a time, so there can be no resistance to that which stirs in the stones outside of this town. I am prepared to wipe you clean, Evert the Digger, in any way necessary.”
“Can’t wipe this.”
Kippy pulled the top book from the stack on his end table. The significance he’d hope it might hold became apparent. In Thekan’s presence it hummed like something electric. The Judge gawped at it.
“Got your number, don’t I?” Kippy said. “This here is a detailed account of how, with a single decree, you took the God out of this town in ’39. Don’t take a genius to figure out you’re back somehow, a godless thing come to make more godless work. Ain’t it? Just look at you.”
